Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- James “Whitey” Bulger, the former
fugitive who ran a criminal gang in South Boston from the 1970s
to the early 1990s, faces spending his life in prison after
being convicted in a racketeering and murder conspiracy.

Bulger, 83, who was captured in 2011 in Santa Monica,
California, after hiding from authorities for 16 years, was
found guilty by a jury in federal court in Boston.

Bulger, dressed in jeans, white sneakers and a long-sleeved
crewneck shirt, showed no emotion and stared straight ahead as
the verdicts were read. After the jury was dismissed, Bulger
gave the thumbs up sign to two of his nieces who attended almost
every day of the trial.

Family members of victims cried in court. The widow of one
victim, Patricia Donahue, openly wept and hugged her three sons.

Prosecutors said Bulger was an informant for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation during most of the time he was leading
an Irish-American organized-crime gang and that at least three
agents were corrupted by his schemes. Bulger, who denied he was
an informant, declined to testify at the two-month trial,
telling the judge at an Aug. 2 hearing that the proceeding
hadn’t been fair.

Bigger Target

The trial raised questions about the extent to which
federal agents wrongfully protected Bulger from local and state
authorities for years before he disappeared, letting him kill
and steal in exchange for tips about a bigger FBI target that he
was associated with, the Patriarca Family organized crime group.

Bulger was charged with 48 racketeering charges, one of
which included allegations he was involved in 19 murders. The
claims include extortion and possession of machine guns and
other firearms used in crimes. The jury of eight men and four
women deliberated for 32 hours over five days. U.S. District
Judge Denise Casper set a Nov. 13 sentencing date.

Of the 19 murders included in the racketeering count,
Bulger was convicted of 11 murders and acquitted of seven --
Michael Milano, Al Plummer, William O’Brien, James O’Toole, Al
Notorangeli, James Sousa and Francis Buddy Leonard.

The jury made no finding on the murder of Debra Davis, who
was the girlfriend of Stephen Flemmi, a former Bulger associate
who testified Bulger strangled Davis because she learned they
were informants for the FBI. Flemmi claimed Bulger killed Davis
and Flemmi removed her teeth and wrapped her body in a tarp for
burial in a secret grave.

Among the witnesses against Bulger was Patricia Donahue,
whose husband Michael, 32, was a bystander gunned down by Bulger
during a 1982 hit on Halloran, a former gang associate.
Prosecutors said Halloran was targeted because he’d agreed to
become an informant against Bulger.

Tom Donahue, who was 8 years old when his father was
killed, said during the trial that his family still doesn’t have
a full account of the murder and believes Bulger may have had an
accomplice whom the government decided not to prosecute as part
of a plea agreement.

‘Mixed Emotions’

“I have very mixed emotions,” Donahue said yesterday
after the verdict. “After 31 years after a lot of FBI cover
ups, schemes and lies they finally found someone guilty in the
murder of my father. It’s a good feeling without a doubt. My
heart goes out to the other families. I think they got robbed of
that closure.”

J.W. Carney, Bulger’s lawyer, said he will appeal the
verdict.

“The lead issue will be the ruling that prevented him from
presenting his immunity defense,” Carney said.

The judge had barred Bulger’s defense team from telling the
jury about his claim that he struck an immunity deal with the
U.S. Justice Department years ago that protected him from
prosecution in exchange for protecting the life of a prosecutor.

Before the trial, the U.S. argued the deal was a fantasy,
and that no government official can confer what amounts to a
“license to kill.”

“Jim Bulger was very pleased at how the trial went and
even pleased by the outcome,” Carney said yesterday. “It was
important to him the government corruption be exposed.”

Violence, Threats

“Mr. Bugler knew as soon as he was arrested he was going
to die behind the walls of the prison or on a gurney being
injected,” Carney said. “The trial was never about Jim Bulger
being set free.”

Outside court yesterday, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in
Boston said that “many people’s lives were so terribly harmed
by the criminal actions of Bulger and his crew. Today’s
conviction does not alter that harm or lessen it. However, we
hope they find some degree of comfort that today has come and
Bulger is being held accountable for his horrific crimes.”

In order to “generate money and maintain dominance among
other criminal enterprises, Bulger and his associates engaged in
numerous illegal activities such as loansharking, extortion of
local business owners and bookmakers, trafficking of narcotics
and firearms, and murder,” Ortiz said in a statement. “Bulger
and associates under his direction used violence, threats, and
intimidation to carry out these illegal activities.”

Money Seized

Bulger on Aug. 9 waived his right to a separate jury trial
on the forfeiture of $822,000 in cash and firearms found in his
apartment when he was captured. Prosecutors allowed Bulger to
keep a 1986 Stanley Cup hockey championship ring found in his
apartment because it was a gift, according to a court document
made public yesterday.

The name of the gift giver wasn’t disclosed. Prosecutors
said they may still seek to seize the ring as an asset in civil
forfeiture proceedings. The judge will decide if all of the
money seized is the proceeds of his crimes and must be
forfeited.

Bulger went into hiding in 1994, tipped off about impending
charges. The warning came from his longtime FBI handler, Special
Agent John Connolly, who’s now serving 50 years in prison for
crimes linked to Bulger, including murder.

Bulger eventually shared a space on the FBI’s most-wanted
list alongside Osama bin Laden. The agency, which offered $2
million for information leading to his arrest, described him as
one of its most notorious fugitives, known for infiltrating the
FBI and “sowing seeds of public distrust in law enforcement
that remain in South Boston to this day.”

Received Immunity

John Morris, Connolly’s supervisor at the bureau, was also
implicated. He got immunity from prosecution by admitting he
accepted cash from Bulger in exchange for protecting him. Morris
testified against Connolly and was a witness against Bulger.

In 1999, then-Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Special
Prosecutor John Durham to investigate wrongdoing involving the
FBI’s ties with Bulger. While the probe led to Connolly’s
conviction, the Justice Department never made the report public.

At trial, jurors heard from prosecution witnesses including
former allies and friends of Bulger, some still in prison and
seeking leniency, who testified they conspired with him in some
of the killings. A federal prosecutor told the jury in his
closing statement that the evidence showed Bulger “is one of
the most vicious, violent, calculating criminals to ever walk
the streets of Boston.”

Star Witnesses

Bulger’s lawyers argued he was being blamed for killings
carried out by the government’s star witnesses. The testimony of
his ex-associates can’t be trusted because they cut deals with
prosecutors to avoid lengthy prison terms or death sentences,
Carney told the jury at the end of the trial.

Witnesses at Bulger’s trial included John Martorano, a
former gunman who said he killed 20 people, sometimes on
Bulger’s orders.

Martorano, who was a fugitive living in Florida from 1978
to 1995, spent 12 years and two months in federal prison under a
plea agreement for his crimes. He was released from prison in
2007 and agreed to help in the case against Bulger.

Ortiz yesterday defended the plea agreement with Martorano.
Without making a deal with Martorano, the government wouldn’t
have convinced others in Bulger’s gang to plead and wouldn’t
have uncovered the depth of corruption and the locations of
secret mob graves, she said.

Illegal Activities

“We wouldn’t have been able to find out what happened to
people who just disappeared,” she said.

Flemmi told the jury that Bulger conspired with him to kill
people who discovered too much about their illegal activities.
Flemmi avoided a federal death penalty for his crimes by
pleading guilty in 2004 to 10 murders. He’s serving a life
sentence.

Kevin Weeks, a former ally of Bulger who testified against
the defendant and took the stand in previous related cases,
reached a plea deal with prosecutors on drug charges and served
five years in prison. He was released in 2005.

“The government is buying their testimony; the witnesses
are selling their testimony; the currency that’s used here is
how much freedom is the person going to get,” Carney said at
trial.

Former Massachusetts State Police Colonel Thomas J. Foley,
who investigated Bulger for more than 20 years, said yesterday
that the case stands as a painful lesson in the misuse of
informants.

Learned Something

“You just sit back and hopefully everybody has learned
something,” Foley said after the verdict. “I’m not so sure
everybody has. We have to keep pushing the story of Bulger
forward, keep talking about it and saying this is not the way to
operate out there.”

Bulger, who grew up in the predominantly Irish-Catholic
housing projects of South Boston, became involved in serious
crime at a young age, including rape, and spent three years in
the Alcatraz federal prison for bank robbery before rising to
dominate much of Boston’s criminal underworld, the FBI has said.
Bulger’s crimes earned him a total of $10 million to $30
million, some of which he stashed in foreign bank accounts in
the U.K. and Ireland, the FBI said.

Bulger’s brother William, the former longtime president of
the state Senate, was forced out as president of the University
of Massachusetts in 2003, after he admitted he spoke to his
fugitive brother in the 1990s and didn’t help law enforcement
capture him.

Into Hiding

Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, who had gone into
hiding with him, was also arrested when Bulger was captured. In
March 2012, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor a
fugitive and was sentenced to eight years in a federal prison.

Drug Enforcement Administration agent Dan Doherty, who
along with three Massachusetts state troopers helped build the
original 1995 case that brought down the Bulger crew, said
yesterday the verdicts should bring comfort to the victims.

“Not all of them realized the verdict they wanted today,
but in the general sense they all got the same verdict,”
Doherty said. “He is going away for life and that’s the most
important thing.”

William O’Brien Jr., son of William O’Brien, whom Martorano
testified he shot in 1973 and whom the jury acquitted Bulger of
murder.

“My father just got murdered 40 years later today in that
courtroom,” O’Brien said after the verdict. “That prosecution
dropped the ball. Five minutes they spent talking about his
murder. That jury should be ashamed of themselves.”

Punish Government

Defense attorney Hank Brennan told jurors during closing
arguments that they could use their verdict to punish the
government for the FBI’s dealings with criminals.

“At what point as citizens do we say, ‘You know what?
There has to be accountability,’” Brennan said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak said the defense team
was wrong to make the trial about government corruption.

“They’re asking you to send some message about how the big
bad government needs to learn a lesson from this case,” Wyshak
said to the jury. “That would be a violation of your oath.”

The case is U.S. v. Weeks, 99-cr-10371, U.S. District
Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).